Milgrams obedience study - social

• aim

  to investigate whether ordinary people would follow orders and give an innocent person a potentially harmful electric shock
• what type of sample was used

  volunteer
• how many participants were there

  40
• how much were participants paid

  $4.50
• what gender was the whole sample

  male
• what does the gender used in the sample make the experiment

  androcentric
• what age were the volunteers

  20-50
• where were all the volunteers from

  new Haven, America
• what was the profession of the confederate experimenter

  biology teacher
• procedure simply

  1. roles of teacher and learner given - rigged
  2. teacher and learner taken to room, teacher (participant) watches learner get strapped in to electric shock chair
  3. ppts given a test shock of 45v to show what they were giving to learner
  4. teacher placed in adjacent room with switches increasing from 15 to 450v
  5. teacher had to give word pairs to learner to teach them them
  6. teacher to give learner a shock if they made a mistake
  7. voltage increase with each mistake
  8. verbal prods given by experimenter when teacher hesitated
• what increments did the voltage go up in

  15V
• what were the switches labelled with

  slight shock at beginning, intense shock near end, XXX at very end
• what were the four verbal prods

  1 - please continue

  2 - the experiment requires that you continue

  3 - it is absolutely essential tat you continue

  4 - you have no other choice, you must go on
• results - what percentage of pts went to the full 450v

  65%
• results - what percentage of ppts when to 300V

  100%
• results - what percentage showed nervous laughter

  35%
• results - what were the physical observations of the ppts

  sweating, trembling, stuttering, digging nails into flesh, nervous laughter - some developed into seizures
• conclusion - what did the findings show

  that ordinary Americans are surprisingly obedient to legitimate authority
• what did milgram suggest explained the obedience

  a number of factors such as the perceived competence and reputation of the researcher and the idea that the participant was somehow advancing science
• generalisability weakness


  . sample consisted of 40 men from New Haven, America = no women who may have acted differently = androcentric

  . were all volunteers = may have been more motivated to take part and please experimenter so act differently

  . therefore can't generalise findings to wider population as sample is not representative and may not reflect behaviour of other individuals
• generalisability counter argument


  . sample included range of individuals in terms of occupations, socioeconomic status and age

  . eg some had uni degrees others didn't, sample ranged 20-50 = representative

  . therefore study can be generalised to others in the TARGET population
• reliability strength


  . procedure was standardised so all participants had same experience

  . eg two confederates always the same people, timing of learners mistakes always the same

  . meant study is replicable
• reliability counter argument


  . Perry argued that there were occasions where the experimenter deviated from the script

  . eg once he gave 20 prods before allowing a ppt to leave

  . this meant his procedure may nor be as standardised so isn't as reliable as he claimed
• application


  . have been applied to improve pilot training

  . led to improving cockpit behaviour and potentially save lives
• validity weakness


  . ppts may have only obeyed bc they didn't believe the shocks were real

  . Orne and Holland argued this

  . calls to question the internal validity of the findings as milgram was not testing what he intended to
• validity counter argument


  . findings were supported by a study in a realistic environment - hofling

  . individuals did follow orders of an authority figure even though it could have lead to harm

  . therefore there s external validity
• validity weakness 2


  . lacks validity

  . giving eletric shocks and recalling word pairs is not a true representation of real obedience and so lacks mundane realism

  . therefore study lacks ecological validity as doesn't reflect situation where we would normally be obedient
• ethical issues